If establishment Democrats are worried about attacking Trump in his areas of strength, maybe they should stop worrying -- he no longer seems to have areas of strength. But if they want to be cautious, you'd imagine that they'd want to go for the areas where he's weakest.
But that doesn't seem to be the case.
The most timid Democrats are locked into a rigid formula: Talk about nothing except the economy and Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security. Never veer from this path. And so we have this:
Democrats, after weeks of struggling to find a message that resonates with ordinary Americans while President Donald Trump dominates the news, are beginning to settle on one: the allegation that Trump and his allies are crippling Social Security.It's good that they're doing this. But why not look at the list of items above on which Trump is getting absolutely crushed in polling and start talking about those as well?
Former president Joe Biden used his first public comments since leaving office to criticize Trump’s handling of the popular program. Early Democratic ads are targeting Republican senators on Social Security. Democrats have visited Social Security offices around the country, sometimes getting turned away and going public. Senate Democrats have set up a “war room” to deliver the message.
Look at the last item in the bar graph above. "Reducing federal funding for medical research" is opposed by 77% of The Washington Post's poll respondents. It would be safe even for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to talk about that, too.
Medicare and Social Security are a constant presence in older people's lives, so of course we're afraid to lose them. But cancer and stroke and ALS and Alzheimer's and other medical conditions are frequent worries. We'd like to think there are smart people working on cures and treatments for these conditions -- and then we see DOGE, for no reason we can comprehend, cutting grants to medical researchers. We see a U.S.-based Russian scientist with expertise in advanced cancer detection being arrested, detained, and threatened with deportation over a minor customs violation. We see the administration punishing universities for alleged campus wrongthink by cutting off research grants, while handing over control of those grants to a crackpot with no scientific expertise.
People don't just talk about money around their kitchen tables. Older people in particular talk about their health. It's reasonable for us to think that treatments we might need, or family members might need, will never come or will be delayed because of this Trump/Robert Kennedy/Project 2025 vendetta against science.
The young firebrands many of us hope will shake up the party probably won't talk about any of this -- at their age, health isn't a top concern. So the old guard ought to speak up. Come on, Chuck and Hakeem -- 77% disapproval makes this safe enough even for you to talk about.
